All Things Digital

Skip to main content.

SEARCH
Voices

Voices

The Voices Feed

from other Web sites

Ripoff Alert: Senate Probes “Post Transaction Marketing,” Other Dubious Web Sales Practices; UNTD, VPRT Slide

November 18, 2009
by Eric Savitz
Blogger and Columnist, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily

Eric Savitz

Several Internet stocks are taking some heat this morning following the release yesterday of a Senate report on aggressive sales tactics on the Web–and in particular singling out for scorn a practice known as “post-transaction marketing.”

The report, issued by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, asserts that three Connecticut-based direct marketing companies–Affinion (which is owned by Apollo Management), Vertrue (which is owned by investors One Equity Partners, Rho Ventures and Brencourt Advisors as well as members of management) and Webloyalty–and their e-commerce partners have together raked in over $1.4 billion in revenue “by using aggressive tactics to charge Internet shoppers for club membership programs.”

These guys are responsible for the stream of offers you get for trials in membership clubs, “cash back,” and other services when you are buying movie tickets, airline tickets, flowers or others goods on the Web.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Tagged: Internet, advertising, digital, frontpage, software, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | permalink

Featured Voices Posts

Featured Video

View All Jobs | Post a Job Job Listings

A sponsored service from SimplyHired

Voices Posts by Date

About Voices

This is a section of the All Things Digital Web site featuring posts from around the Web, from other Dow Jones properties and also original pieces we solicit. The section is now explicitly labeled that it comes "from other Web sites."

We are fully aware of the controversies around how linking and aggregating is done on the Web and we, in no way, are attempting to "scrape" original content created by others. Instead, regarding third-party posts, we are trying to point readers of this site to other posts from around the Web that we admire and are trying to do so in the quickest manner possible.

The Internet is full of terrific content that is not ours and we want to help our readers find it by making editorial suggestions--Look, Mom, no algorithm!--of posts we think are worth their time.

That is why we have made even more changes to Voices to ensure we do this in the most transparent and timely way. While we don't expect that everyone will agree with our policies, we have made changes that reflect our intent in pointing to content outside our site.

So here is exactly what we do: Read more »

About the Site

Because the site is wholly owned by Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, we aim to adhere to the journalistic standards of the best of the mainstream media. But, because it is run autonomously as a small online startup, we aim to exhibit the fresh thinking and nimbleness of the best of the new media. We want to be first, and sassy, but also well sourced and accurate. We will offer lots of opinion and analysis, but plenty of fact as well.

Read more »